Let me give you some background. My sister told me that when I was young I was a really sweet person. Then she believes that brain damage made me evil. She pointed me to a book by Dr. Amen called Change your Brain,Change your Life. In the book he makes the case that severe head trauma can cause personality change.
Since I really don’t remember much of anything before the ‘incident’I’m not sure if I was ever a sweet person so I can only take her word for it.
The Incident
So we were playing rocket ship in the attic of our garage. Laird,Robbie and myself were there. The attic was mostly unfinished with just a few boards you could walk on right in the center. If you stepped outside of that small space you would fall.
We thought it would be a great idea to create some rocket ship chairs out of cardboard. The best bet was to put these chairs,lounges really,between the struts. So that’s what we did. We wrapped the cardboard around the studs and then nailed them on top. This seemed secure to us.
So we started playing rocket ship and we hit some turbulence and had to get into our lounge chairs quickly. I got in mine and I remember watching Laird bouncing off the ships walls and laughing. That was the last thing I remember before the tides turned.
So apparently,I fell about 10 feet and landed head-first on the concrete. My father later said landing on my head was what saved me. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. My father also told me he heard me crying and came out to see what was going on and found me staggering towards the house. “I thought you’d been over at doll’s”. Doll was the African American alcoholic that lived across the alley from us.
So I was able to get up and walk into the house in a semi-coma and I woke up out of the coma about 20 minutes later,my head pounding,still crying and evil thoughts running through my head. Here is where my descent had apparently begun.
Hmmm. I don’t remember the rocket ship incident,maybe I didn’t hear about it because girls weren’t allowed in outer space. Sounds like a rule Laird would have made,since he was probably afraid you would make fun of the fact that we’d shared a long,sensual kiss (his idea) in front of my house after he walked me home from Kindergarten one day. I don’t think Robbie would have cared who was in outer space as long as there was a glimmer of hope that he might encounter a dinosaur there.
Maybe,since it was your garage,(hence,your expedition) you sought to act out your Buck Rogers fantasy in the presence of like-minded individuals only,since I may have let it slip on some previous occasion that I thought space exploration was a dismal and pointless occupation. This is unlikely because I was careful to never let it be known that I held the same sentiment toward handball,H.O.R.S.E and all activities that involved throwing spherical objects toward hoops,walls,or bats,because I would have gone to great lengths to engage in those activities since you had a way of making them seem like fun to me. Anyway,enough speculation as to the reason for my absence that fateful day.
I’d like to work this event into a time-line,so I can know if the Sweet Brian I remember existed only before this or only after this. (In keeping with the theory of Dr. Amen and your sister,I will temporarily suspend my own reasoning and work within the parameters of the assumption that you couldn’t have been sweet both before and after.)
Judging from the fact that Robbie wasn’t unteathered from the clothes-line until 1962,or allowed out of his yard without the accompaniment of a female family member until around 1964,and we’ve already established the fact that girls weren’t included on this occasion due to the fact that if one of us had been there the whole bloody episode would not have happened,(We would have put safety above the advancement of Earth’s place in the galactic pecking order,provided you would have listened! I know Robbie’s cousins,whether it be Judy or Darcy,would have done the same,even though I’d never forgiven them or you if it was one of them there instead of me) you must have been at least nine years old when this happened. I remember spending a lot of time with you between the ages of nine and eleven,and yes,to me you were as sweet as I remember you being before that age.
Well,lets think outside the box for a moment. Could it have been some other incident that brought about your supposed decline on the sweetness meter? Let’s revisit the mention of Doll,our friendly neighborhood alcoholic prostitute. She was a sort of “WandaWanda of Color”to us kids,minus the pointy hat and harem pants. She was there whenever we needed a little sparkle in our lives,that is,until our mothers (God Bless ‘em} took it upon themselves to monitor our moral development! I guess it was the broken guitar incident that had them worried.
One morning we knocked on Doll’s door and waited the usual three minutes for her to stagger through the strewn bottles out onto the porch and squint her bloodshot eyes into the sun to search and find us standing there beneath her like expectant little stray puppies. We asked her for the usual:A serenade. She laughed loudly that morning and the stench of liquor rained down on us. Then,with her semi-bathrobed arm she threw open the door and invited us to look inside. The dusty light filtering through the shreds of curtain revealed a very large,blonde,nordic looking lumberjack fellow smiling at us from between the sheets. He had a black eye. She then reached around the corner and from behind the door produced a very broken guitar. (Scenes of El Kabong immediately flooded our little minds) “I can’t play for you now,cause I busted it over his head.”was her tenderly apologetic explanation that came out in a long,sentimental drawl. We turned away,disheartened,yet couldn’t wait to describe the whole sordid drama to the rest of the neighborhood!
It was then that our mothers got their heads together and decided that the goings-on at Doll’s were not of the nature conducive to an appropriate atmosphere for the nurturing of impressionable children. As you stated here,even your father was worried when he heard you crying that you must surely have been El-Kabongged by the priestess of evil herself and were at hell’s very door! This surely contributed to the decision that it would be to our advantage to be placed in the hands of such wise and wonderful harbingers of good-will as the likes of Sister Pancrateus. I assume she wasn’t a singing nun and there was nary a guitar within a stone’s throw of her,making it a safe and wholesome place for you to be.
That,my friend is my conclusion to the mystery of your sweet countenance suffering a fatal blow,and it had more to do with a primary pencil to the knuckles than going headlong into the garage floor. But,just to play it safe,you really should include me in your next mission to the far reaches of the universe.